


Sleep has left me alone to carry the weight of unraveling where we went wrong

by stellations



Series: Out of the Blue [2]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Episode: s03e19 Out Of The Blue, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 11:46:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6752644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellations/pseuds/stellations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title: "Stupid" by Sarah McLachlan</p>
    </blockquote>





	Sleep has left me alone to carry the weight of unraveling where we went wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Title: "Stupid" by Sarah McLachlan

The clock by the fridge had passed 3 am some 17 minutes ago, but to Helen it still felt like the midnight hour had barely begun.

She hadn't slept yet, something that she knew James would point out to her as soon as his digital photography project was finished. In turn, she would take the opportunity to point out that neither had he. Nikola swirled clay around on whatever that stand was that spun it around in a circle so he could shape it. He kept reminding her of the name, but for whatever reason, she had never managed to make it stick. Her gaze swept the room, where she could see John passed out over his notes on the couch in the middle of the room. James sat at the kitchen table, facing the rest of them, arguably so he could keep an eye on them. Helen knew that was a ruse; he was too buried in his part of the project to notice much or he would have stopped Nigel, who was halfway through tattooing something with a henna kit on John's cheek. 

Helen snickered softly to herself. John would be furious when he awoke.

She would never have laughed if she had known just how angry he would be. Angry enough to almost break the painting Helen was working on. Angry enough to throw a few things through the window when no one was around.

The new window and the repair crew who were at their house when she returned from classes the next afternoon should have been her first warning sign. The names he called her for letting Nigel have his fun should have been her red flag. Instead, by the time they were married, she had taken to trying to talk him down from his anger.

It wasn't until the night he backhanded her over a painting that she seriously began to consider leaving. 

Sometimes, she could still feel it, the sting of his hand against her cheek, how the skin rubbed raw just at his touch and her head whipped back with the force of his strike. It was as though he had intended to do this for a long time and was waiting for the perfect moment to strike her down. The venom in his eyes morphed, turning black, his rage amplified on his face. There were days where she couldn't breathe and it wasn't because of his hand pressed tightly around her throat, though that memory haunted her, as well. 

Sometimes it wasn't the physical trauma, as those days were often few and far between. It wasn't always the fist through the wall by her head or the broken tea pot on the floor at her feet, shattered into a thousand pieces like she felt she was as well.

No, what was more common were the little things that built up over time. The touches, the way he would look at her as though he owned her, how he would often say that she was his. Nothing without him. He would sponsor her and keep her safe and happy. But she was and always would belong to him.

Maybe it would be easier if she traded places with that tea pot. That was why she had started obsessively drinking coffee. As a buffer, a deterrent, something to keep her awake at night.

She was always awake at night.

The light of the moon made painting easy. Each brush stroke even and practiced as she painted from memory the scene of that night. 3 am. She would have to hide it, of course, and well, but she had done so for many of her pieces. Perhaps Nikola or Nigel would want it to immortalize their last happy night together as the Five.

The last night where five was the happy number, rather than four. If four was even the number, she didn't know. The group spent less and less time together now and it made her sad. A lot made her sad.

"I know you're awake, Helen."

The voice startled her visibly through the moonlight, so much so that she actually tipped over her easel in a great clatter as she swung around to face the sound of that voice. That was the sound of a John who had been spending too much time on his projects, whose case was the most important thing to him in the world, who was only _concerned_ about his wife's status of wakefulness because it meant he didn't have control over her. 

She had meant to be in bed before he knew she was gone; she had failed that goal and now fear would be her bedfellow. 

"I was just coming back to bed," she answered, hoping that he might possibly believe her for once. 

White light illuminated his silhouette as he stepped by the doorway, moving towards her slowly, as though he could see the painting facedown on the floor, as though he _knew_ what it was. 

"Don't lie, Helen. It's not becoming of you."

His tone was soft, but it brought a chill down her spine that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature in the air. Opening her mouth to reply, she found her voice stuck somewhere in the bottom of her throat. Unable to force anything out, she simply backed away--

-and stepped straight through the painting she had been trying to hide. 

It was as though a switch had been flipped. John's eyes swung upwards, his gaze meeting hers, and she knew instantly that things were going to go very badly. 

"You were painting."

She swallowed hard a few times, finally managing to force air through her lungs and past her throat. "You spend so much time on your work, John. Why shouldn't I take the chance to work on mine?"

She knew instantly that this was a line she should not have crossed. His hands were on her shoulders not a second later, fingers curling into her skin and holding her painfully still. She could feel the bruises forming on her arms, tears springing to her eyes the longer he held her in place. She wasn't safe with him.

Safety wasn't something she had felt in decades.

"I _need you_ , Helen. At least come to bed. Your wanderings and paintings are not good for my health."

She bit down on the urge to comment that he wasn't losing sleep over his work like she was. Instead, she simply nodded, hoping that he would leave or fall asleep upstairs and she could get back to her work. He wasn't an insomniac as she was. 

Taking her hand in his -- possessively, as though he knew she would try to flee if given the chance -- he guided her back upstairs. She knew he didn't really care about her being there as much as he cared that he knew where she was. So she made a show of getting ready for bed while she waited for him to fall asleep again.

He took one last opportunity to torment her, moving to brush her hair back from her face, reverently, like someone would to a child, though she found nothing sweet about this gesture. It was all she could do not to burst out into one of her increasingly frequent panic attacks. Her lip quivered as she squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the next blow.

What she received instead was a kiss as he pressed his body to hers, her back against the wall. He said nothing as he let her go, but his meaning was clear: he still considered her to be his, even though he only paid attention to her on _his_ terms. But that was how he lived his life. Front and center. On his terms.

That was one of many reasons she wanted out and with the panic humming in her veins, choking her like a too-tight corset, she knew she couldn't stay.

Once she was certain that he had passed out in their bed, she grabbed three large bags and packed them with as many painting supplies as she could possibly manage -- the easel was the hardest, and she decided, after a half-second's consideration, that she would just buy another one. Leaving that, at least, would lend credence to the idea that she was coming back. 

John could believe what he wanted; she was never coming back. 

With everything in hand, she fled as quietly as she could. Taking a car was too risky. No, she couldn't. He could track her far too easily and she was too spooked to drive well. Instead, she ran. Her feet pounded out a steady rhythm through the streets as she dodged cars and as much of the moonlight as she could manage. It was a long, long journey, the longest of her life. Her legs screamed, muscles ached, tears scratched her eyes and her cheeks, and the air came hard and tight like iron in her lungs, but still she didn't stop. Sheer panic and force of will kept her going. Nothing was right. She hurt in places she didn't even know she could. Her heart, her body, her very _soul_ were all fractured, shattered into tiny pieces. Like glass.

Like that tea pot on the floor, or the shard of glass she found one night after John had broken and repaired a window in his anger. Like Nikola's sculpture, smashed by John's hand out of jealous spite for the trinket Nikola had left John's wife.

It was sheer dumb luck that had James awake when she literally stumbled into his door that night. She had been running for hours, from John's prison straight to the only sanctuary she knew of. Straight into James' arms as soon as he opened his house and saw the red tinge to her eyes, how her hair had tangled as she ran, the scrapes on her hands and knees as she had fallen time after time on the asphalt, grinding her skin and blood into the ground like that would somehow make up for her decades of stupidity. Choking on a sob, she clung to James and cried her heart out on his doorstep, letting countless years' worth of pain and fear rush out of her like a toxic wave that needed to be purged. She would apologize later for getting blood on his shirt and would even wash it out for him by hand. He truly was her best friend, her rock, her support, her safe haven.

Her Sanctuary. 

It was 3 am when she awoke with a start, her head cradled on a pillow in James' lap because she didn't want to be alone and he was too afraid to leave her.


End file.
